If you are hosting an event, chances are food is going to play a big part. Think of different events you have attended in the past; if you are thinking about wedding, graduation party, corporate event, anniversary party, birthday party, Christmas party, Thanksgiving dinner, game night, baby shower, funeral or any other event we are sure that food and drinks played a big part. This is because it doesn’t matter what type of event you are attending, you will not enjoy it if you are hungry. Now that we have established the importance of catering for an event we want to go over one of the popular questions we get from our readers which is “How far in advance should one order catering?”
As with most things in life, there is not a simple answer for this question. We would love to say that you should place an order 24 hr in advance for all catering events but that simply would not be true. The short answer to this question is it depends, the long answer is that there are many different factors that determine how far in advance one should order the food. The general rule is for weddings, anniversaries, or any whole day events we recommend you place an order at least one month in advance. This is due to the fact that those type of events generally require you to serve multiple meals per for that day (breakfast, lunch , and dinner) with multiple dishes so they take catering companies a long time to plan and prepare. For events such as Thanksgiving dinners, birthday parties, Christmas Parties, etc where one three course meal is typically served we recommend ordering food no later then one week in advance. For corporate events, gaming nights, or business meetings you can typically get away with ordering food 24 hours in advance (although we would recommend you order few days in advance to be on the safe side) because with those type of events you can get away with serving sub sandwiches, finger foods, or pizza which can be ordered few hours prior to the event. Finally, it is important to note that number of guests that will be at your event plays a huge part on when you should order the food. This is due to the fact that no matter what type of food is going to be served at the event it will take a long time to prepare if you are ordering for a very large group of people (40 guests or more). If you are hosting a large event we recommend placing an order at least one week in advance even if you plan on serving just finger foods.